Home Broadband yes or no

[Intrakota]

I’ve been with Three since November 2003 and have 2 phone contracts, the ride has been up and down and nowhere near the best experience but as we all know the UK mobile networks are all as bad as each other so no point in moving then is there!

Im reading on the community about the Greenpacket Y5-M210 outdoor router because as an existing customer they would like me to move from my M350 Virgin Media contract which I have had for 20 plus years to there Home Broadband service which is currently offered at £15 for the first year and £18.50 for the second year and up to £200 to refund me for any early termination fees from VM with unlimited data.

Thanks to the community members posting there experiences of the service what I’m reading here is not encouraging, I believe I would be buying myself a whole load of heartache.

I do have a friend locally who has had the service for around 5 to 6 years and although he has had issues and slow connectivity generally he is very satisfied with it and recommends it, he doesn’t contribute to the community. So on one hand I have someone I know who has the service and is satisfied (he doesn’t have the Y5-M210) and on the other hand I have multiple comments suggestions and problems from the community to consider.

so am I buying a whole load of heartache?

Regards and Best

[SkyIsNotGreen]

The actual broadband is okay, but if you ever need help, you need to go through the awful out-sourced support.

You literally cannot change anything on your account once created, without going through support.

That means, you can't change email, you can't change your name, address, or phone number.

If you ever lose access to your email or phone number on your account, you are literally screwed.

[Intrakota]

Thank you for that, I wonder what sort of cretin wrote that into the rule book and why, people do change email, phone numbers and move home.

Do these companies actually believe that customers do not speak to each other, hard to believe having then setup a community board for that very purpose.

[MymsMan]

I have been Three customer with the Y5-210MU hub/eero router for almost a year now and  I am a very happy user with Mean download speeds of 450Mbps.

Yes, there were some problems with frequent disconnections over the summer but these seem to have been resolved - I haven't seen any new reports of problems since about August,  My connection remained up for whole of February only being broken by a power cut.

A new version of the hub firmware was released at the end of January.

I do recommend the outdoor hub,   The new Greenpacket indoor hub that Three has started shipping appears to have problems with use as a WiFi router

Remenber Three does have a 30-day money back offer so you have little to lose by giving it a try before cancelling your existing Broadband contract.  The price you have been quoted is less than I am currently paying!  I was able to find significant cashback offers on the various cashback site - topcashback.co.uk had the best offer last year.

[Intrakota]

Thank you for your response. Do you have a link available for the new Greenpacket indoor router, I like the idea of the outdoor router for keeping obstructions between it and the mast to an absolute bare minimum.

i wonder if you could tell me the length of the Ethernet cable on the drum as Customer Service told me I shouldn’t worry about it - I wouldn’t need it !!!!!

I could see from that conversation I was buying well into the future, an electronic device that needs no power source or connection to the router - cheap at ten times the price !!

[MymsMan]

The internal hub details are https://devicesupport.three.co.uk/guides/device/Three/5GHubGreenPacketIndoor#l=threeukcust&lHsim=thr...

Problems with using it as home router are discussed in this thread https://community.three.co.uk/t5/Broadband/Communication-between-LAN-devices-appears-to-be-blocked/t...

The external hub user guide is https://www.three.co.uk/content/dam/threedigital/pdf/5g-outdoor-hub/5goutdoorhub-userguide.pdf  

It does require a power source, a Power over Ethernet (PoE) injector and an ethernet connection to the Eeero router

I think the cable length is 25m, my hub is mounted on a aerial pole above a dormer roof and is just long enough, but if that is not long enough you can just add a longer cable between the PoE injector and the eero

[Intrakota]

Thank you for those additional details, very helpful. The Greenpacket Y5-210MU is certainly the preferred choice for the back of my property possibly glass mounted although a small pole mount will be considered.

My understanding is that there are two services with different APN’s three.co.uk for mobile devices and 3internet for the Broadband service, speed tests with my iPhone 17 are very encouraging (1505 down/99.8 up) but does that mean the Broadband service will return similar results or could they be significantly worse, I’ve seen 150mb banded about which must be worst case usable figures.

I’m thinking I may place an order today and trial it significantly over the next 30 days. I’ve located the local Vodafone tower around half a mile away from where our signal appears to be coming from although we are located about half way between 2 towers, one to the front of the property hidden in tree’s as usual and one to the rear, the later being the preferred choice.

Any additional information would be very welcome, if I proceed to order I will keep you updated with progress and results.

Regards & Best.

[Intrakota]

UPDATE.

Today I purchased the Greenpacket Y5-M210 MU two year Home Broadband offer I was sent by Three to existing customers from a Three store in Milton Keynes. I plan to fit and activate it tomorrow (Sunday)

I will use it exhaustively to establish how reliable it is before deciding if I should retain my Virgin Media Broadband or otherwise.

Thank you to you all for your comments helping me decide if it’s worth a punt, hopefully Three will hold up there end of the bargain.

Regards & Best

[Intrakota]

Now I’m having trouble with the user and admin passwords - 

I’ve changed the user password and I am able to log into the user settings pages.

It tells me I can check for software updates by going to ADVANCED and then UPDATE, but that button doesn’t appear on the menu, it only shows the version installed which is currently 130.00100.113.024 but is it the latest?

Am I supposed to be able to access the Admin login or not because I keep getting refused entry after 3 attempts using either the password shown on the back of the external hub or the password I created for the user ID. Is it also possible to keep the signal indicator showing permanently.

Thank you.